Speedskating. When I watch it, my legs twitch. Being nearly moved to a city with a few rinks, I had already planned to skate and try to teach my son. Now, I want to visit Ottawa and try to skate the entire canal.
I watched the 1500 metre men's final and have a few unpopular opinions. First, I haven't watched much speed skating, but Ohno and the others bounced around a lot before the final lap. He might reasonably have felt disqualifications were in order.
Second, it's a shame that Lee Ho-seok is in for a lifetime of torment. Or, a few weeks of torment, which feels longer for young people (I'm such an old fogey). I can say he clearly made a mistake that cost him and his teammate medals, but he was absolutely right to try to improve his placing.
Speed skating is not a team sport and it is every competitor's duty in individual sports to strive for their personal best.
Yes, it hurt him, his teammate, and his nation's medal count. However, he would have been untrue to what I feel the Olympics are about by accepting third place if he could have gone faster.
He did the right thing, but did it poorly, as far as I, with no real knowledge of how his sport works, can see.
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I see the Samsung chairman, recently pardoned, is again an IOC member. I am late to comment, but I have to say it does not make the IOC nor Korean justice look good.
VANCOUVER, Feb. 10 (Yonhap) -- Former Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee, who was recently reinstated as a member of the International Olympic Committee, attended an IOC general assembly in Vancouver on Wednesday.I would like to link to a fellow K-blogger on the subject, but a quick search of Roboseyo, ROKDrop, Bizarro Brian and Chris in South Korea (links in the sidebar -I'm using the 'not my home computer' excuse again) showed nothing. I do remember posts on the subject.
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I could've puked when I saw Lee, Kun-hee(former Chairman and recently convicted then pardoned felon) participate in the 1500m short track race medal ceremony. He walked out and handed the 3 winners whatever is received other than the medals. Of course he shook their hands as well. Wouldn't it be wonderful to work your butt off as an athlete and then get awarded by a big time criminal. What a disgrace, does Anton Ohno and J.R. Celski even know what a crook that guy is? How about criminal record checks for people like Lee, Kun-hee? The USOC and IOC both let Ohno and Celski down, what an embarrassment.
You comment was posted twice. I deleted one of them. I don't know if it needs to be said twice, but that Lee Kun-hee is a crook needs to be said.
This is probably a reason Samsung and Lee, Kun-hee can do anything they want...
http://www.olympic.org/en/content/The-IOC/Members/Ms-Anita-L-DEFRANTZ/?articleNewsGroup=-1&articleId=76859
Let my quote an excerpt "And for the first time ever, Samsung makes the WOW technology platform available to the general public for Vancouver 2010 allowing fans from around the world to download and install the Public WOW Application to receive up-to-the-minute information, including real-time Games progress,
medal standings and more on their Samsung mobile phones."
I'll have to go into my local LG Telecom store in Seoul and see if I can get "up-to-the-minute information," in English? Someone might think there isn't a connection between LG and Samsung but when I had a problem with my phone in the past I had to go to a Samsung service center to get it fixed.
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